


There's a Troll in the Attic

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Hiveswap
Genre: Character Study, Dammek in space, Flashbacks, M/M, Miscommunication, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Swearing, Theories, accidental 'cause I'm being hopeful in this story :), and accidental toxic behavior, but not NEARLY as much as in Homestuck, first attempt since ACT 1, headcanons, hints that their relationship will grow in the future, hopes, how much does he know about what's happening?, let's see how this went!!, more than in actual Hiveswap, mysterious portals, okay, pogs, second attempt at Dammek narration, the Grubbles/Grubbels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 22:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Whatever Dammek had thought his weapon was before it freaked out on him and became a twofold universe-linking serpent-gate intent on dragging him off to space, it can be said he kept his face calmer than he felt.  You know, when it was happening.  That last part, with the “hurtling through space” thing.(So, this is that “Dammek arrives through the earth portal” fic I said I’d write when it was brought up in the “Another Stop on Our Road” comments.  :D  Thanks, Castor_Raiden!  I hope this does the idea justice.)





	There's a Troll in the Attic

**Author's Note:**

> I’m probably gonna kick myself later, thinking of all kinds of stuff I should’ve put in the notes. :P
> 
> For now… Hm. I talk about some of the lyrics to “Broom Temperature” for a while… And I say Dammek feels most comfortable in his control room ‘cause James Roach’s OST commentary said that’s where they decided to play through his whole theme song, instead of in his bedroom… 
> 
> And I hope whoever reads this enjoys it. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I'm sorry for any mistakes. :D Have a great day.

Whatever Dammek had thought his weapon was before it freaked out on him and became a twofold universe-linking serpent-gate intent on dragging him off to space, it can be said he kept his face calmer than he felt.  You know, when _it_ was happening.  That last part, with the “hurtling through space” thing. 

He’d gotten pretty damn good at looking like he was in control when he kind of wasn’t, what with feeling like a tightly wound spring all the time the way he did.  It was like he was always supposed to be rushing into action, but there wasn’t any immediate, winnable battle to throw himself at guns blazing.  Maybe he only really felt at home in his control room, honestly, or doing the kind of shit that made him feel like he wasn’t just standing still –piling up his guns, forging dangerous connections across Alternia, planning training exercises to keep his moirail Xefros from dying and leaving him with half a band and half a diamond.  That kind of thing.

It wasn’t like Scythian sold textbooks on organizing revolutions, so most of the training shit was just kind of pulled out of a hat.  What they might have to do on the run, for instance, or what could make for badass action movie reenactments.  Thanks to Dammek, Xefros knew how to live off whatever crap he might find going down the street or digging around in some sticky purple forest mud.  One time, Xefros joked that living off mud garbage might not be that different from sifting through the crusty, molding wreck of Dammek’s kitchen.  He hadn’t had to apologize so much, afterwards – that shit was funny, Dammek was just focusing on something else at the time so he’d literally forgotten to laugh.  There was that restlessness, again.  Nothing was right, not across their whole awful, open wound of a planet, and either of them could be executed any day for no good reason.  The best they could do was…  Try.  Plan.

They had to be ready for whatever was coming to them, after all.  Ready to fire those guns and splatter imperial skulls, maybe.  Ready to scrape together voices for themselves and protest, which generally involved getting Xefros to sing incendiary lyrics Dammek had tweaked to be even more incendiary.  (And then making lyric videos because some of the comments they’d gotten said no one could understand him through the autotune mic.)    

They should’ve even been ready, apparently, for a spiraling trickster-lollipop portal to open up in the middle of their secret weapon – just out of the goddamn blue – and slurp Dammek inside it while his lusus bellowed to get back into the basement, terrified and scratching up the door.  Threatening to crack apart his claws.  Dammek had been able to smell bronze blood like sharp cinnamon in the air, like the beast had already sliced himself open by the time he was lifted away.  He’d smelled their subgrub on fire, too, all burned hair and melting plastic.  The battle had come to him, completely and totally, right when he couldn’t shoot a single drone out of the sky.

Dammek should have been ready to leave Xefros behind without saying goodbye, too, but of course he wasn't.  He’d dropped his fucking tablet on the ground when the portal reached for him, so even if there was a signal out in space…  Or wherever he was going, in the end…  It would be a _little_ hard to say anything at all.  Couldn’t ask if he was okay, or instruct him on what to do in case of a drone attack.  How was Xefros supposed to handle this shit?  How was Dammek supposed to deal with all the silence?

Normally, Dammek spilled whatever hurt he saw out to Xefros like he was writing his manifesto in jabbing hand motions and a lip all twisted up in disgust.  Xefros nodded and sat so close Dammek could feel the solid meat of him, the bulk and the warmth.  He moved slowly, off the Arena Stickball field, Xefros.  He nodded with a nervous, twitching smile on.  That sense of being heard helped Dammek’s spine sink forward into slouching, again – helped him breathe out a deep sigh, like the anxious, pissed-off coils of him were coming unwound just a little bit. 

But there wasn’t any Xefros to duck his head all sheepishly and ask for directions, or even offer up a clumsy metaphor about sports to try and make sense of things.  Not in _actual fucking space._  

Dammek was cold, beneath his hoodie, and it felt a little like he was falling into the seadwellers’ deep ocean, with stars just as alien and threatening as bioluminescence all around, swimming in an inky darkness at least as choking outside his pool of mystical, weapon-born light.

When Dammek passed his human counterpart, he met her pale, watery eyes and was glad she wouldn’t be able to read him behind his shades.

He could have been feeling anything, just then, but she was an open book full of secret codes and juicy, blood-boiling details.  Her mouth hung open, fleshy and pink, soft like a sponge left soaking so long Xefros would say it was going to grow mold.  She stared out at everything, horrified, with eyes as honest as bruises.  Almost as honest as Xefros’s.

If Dammek could have asked the alien girl one thing, it might have been about their maybe-shared weapon, or about where he was headed.  Maybe he would have asked about the life he was leaving behind him – the busted hive, the moirail who called him “Tetrarch Dammek” with a kind of reverence.  Like his title could’ve been a pale-as-anything nickname, too, and Xefros truly believed in him.  Believed in his leadership and his layers upon layers of locked doors, in his cryptic tests and his grasping, always grasping for something out of reach. 

Xefros leaned into Dammek on cue, when he laced his arm around him.  He worried if it didn’t look like he was eating anything but junk food – he scrubbed at his floors until all the sticky, crusty stuff came off like scabs.  Xefros didn’t even complain when Dammek got him to sleep without sopor for days at a time, so he could taste their species’ dark subconscious.  So he could sleep wherever he needed to when shit hit the fan, you know?  Like it was currently doing.  Just…  Shit everywhere.

Would this alien tell Xefros what had happened to Dammek?  Would she tell him he’d looked brave as hell out in space, or that he’d had grub sauce ground into those sweatpants he’d been wearing for the past four nights?

Honestly, maybe Dammek would have kept those questions and all others swallowed up as deep inside him as a list of ever-shifting code words Xefros never seemed to keep caught up with.  (Dammek _did_ change them the same way he floated between “Grubbles” and “Grubbels” for a band name, honestly.)  Maybe he would see any questions as a little weakness, like letting his armor slip off or looking too uncertain in front of someone he wanted to respect him.

At any rate, he met the girl’s eyes for just a second and then he kept on plummeting.

It wouldn’t occur to Dammek yet that Xefros chewing on all his complaints for sweeps and sweeps could only eat him away inside.  Nodding and nodding, whether the words stuck in his thinkpan or not – sleeping bundled up in nightmares and not knowing why…  Dammek couldn’t see it yet, that gap between them.  That gap meant Xefros couldn’t hear everything warm he meant when he said he loved his smile; that gap meant Xefros couldn’t realize when Dammek was posturing to look all tough or when he legitimately didn’t care.  There were just too many times he’d commandeered Xefros’s stuff for the revolution without saying why, without pressing a kiss on his forehead or muttering something about thanks.  Too many conversations where Dammek let Xefros call himself worthless, a rustblood failure trailing behind him like moss grown thick over the back of some mighty statue warlord.  And he didn’t say, “No, you’re the only person even a little bit close to me – I’d rather be your moirail than your Tetrarch.”  And he didn’t say, “I’m proud of you, and all that stuff you say about yourself is just bullshit.”

_“Dammek is bronze and burnished – I’m just the rust.”_

That was how Xefros had introduced the pair of them in that first Grubbles/Grubbels song.  Dammek hadn’t realized he and his moirail were hearing two different meanings distorted through that same autotuned mic, not until he was already a world away and not so sure he’d ever make his way back.

He’d learn, though.  Like when Xefros had scooted one of Dammek’s computers over and found a nest of gloppy mold growing out of an old snack bowl, he would learn what he’d stood for in Xefros’s personal ground-in hemospectrum.  A higher-up more than an equal.  The boss more than someone head over heels and pale for him, even if Dammek thought he could somehow be both.    

But for now, everything swam and burned and grew much, much closer.

For now, Dammek would be thrown out of a second dizzy snake-portal, jamming his horn against a stranger’s crooked wooden floor with a pain that shot down his spine and left him cussing for a second into his clenched-up fists.  The air was dusty and sweet, like old smoke soaked into fabric.  When Dammek heaved himself up a little, he found a dead thing staring at him.  Its face was shrunken and bandaged up as if someone had expected it to be bleeding.  The room was full of alien globes, their planet completely drowned in oceans. 

Dammek thought about the Heiress back on Alternia, swaggering around with some lowblood’s insides crusted under her ornate and gem-studded claws.  She’d have glitter painted on her gills, just then, and the worst fucking jokes he’d ever heard balanced on her tongue.  Or else typed up on her mobile husktop and only waiting to be posted, of course. 

How bold were the seadwellers on this new planet, if their oceans dominated so much of the world?

Dammek stood up, but his head was spinning like he’d just come off a Subjugglator’s warm up torture coaster – before the parts where those clowns stretched their fingers into a person’s mind, of course, and a while before any limbs usually got ripped off, too.

He steadied himself, and – without really thinking about what it meant – studied and equipped a few of the deadlier looking alien guns piled just next to the globes.  They were fragile looking, honestly.  Like play things, too easy to snap between your claws or accidentally crush with a levitated drum set.  You really couldn’t have too many ways to stop people from coming after you, though.  To be the hunter, not the hunted – the cat, even when the deer screamed to run. 

Maybe he tried to throw himself back through the portal, back to Alternia and Xefros and everything that needed his direction, needed that same restlessness that sometimes kept him awake all day and buried in his too-may screens.  There was this awful, buzzing forcefield, though, so even if he tried that Dammek would have to turn around eventually and take in the rest of the attic.

The room was claustrophobic and dim, but no dimmer than he usually kept his own hive.  It crackled with a static-y voice, coming from a primitive alien tablet Dammek figured he should probably investigate.  He waded through musty cloth and arcane treasure – a hand in a jar, for instance, just waiting to have its fingers twisted into the rudest gesture a troll could think of.  All this stranger’s stuff pressed close around him, kind of like his own but a lot less smelly and with fewer sour bug-based food items involved. 

From far away, the fizz and crackle of the alien not-tablet reminded him a little of one of the few times he’d remembered to pry himself out of his hive and to one of Xefros’s Arena Stickball games.  Static sounded a little like the cheering had as he’d headed up to the stadium, if the gory threats players had been yelling were a little more terrified and wheedling.  A little more like an alien begging someone or something called a “Joey” to pick up, to tell them they were wrong and everything was alright.  The voice sputtered in and out.

Dammek thought of the empty, vague way Xefros’s eyes had traveled the stadium before landing on him.  His moirail honestly hadn’t expected to see him there, though of course Dammek’d drawled about how he’d try to stop by.  He felt so out of place without any team’s colors, literally only there for one player on the field.  He’d flashed Xefros whatever punk rock-ish hand gesture came to mind first and watched his face open up like a hacked door.

If he were honest with himself – and Dammek tried to be, when his instincts weren’t howling to run, or kill, or some strange, impossible combination of the two – he knew thinking about that moment meant too much for him to process right then.  It could have sort of meant _everything_ , except that there were so many other things that had to mean “everything,” too.

Dammek held that image of Xefros beaming at him in his mind the same way he might have held a gun up to the Heiress’s finned fish skull and squeezed the trigger down hard.

He crouched and scooped up the sad, clunky alien not-tablet.  The voice on the other side told Joey they were proud to be her “brother” whatever happened, and to remember that she could engineer something clever out of string and pogs to fish their attic key out from between the floorboards.

Dammek considered just pocketing the not-tablet and going about his ridiculous night, but sometimes Xefros said he was proud to be his moirail, too.  He was supposed to be Xefros’s action hero, after all. 

So Dammek fiddled with the not-tablet and announced, “I’m not your ‘Joey,’” as clearly and steadily as he could.  In what he thought of as his “Tetrarch’s voice.”

“Fudge it all,” groaned the voice on the other side of the not-tablet.  It sounded like the voice’s owner was crying, trying to gulp down the kind of bunched-up sobs that meant a hand squeezed against your lips to keep the screams in.  Dammek sometimes daydreamed about being able to comfort Xefros if he ever got like that, but truth be told he wasn’t sure how he’d have started going about it. 

He stuffed the not-tablet deep into his inventory and thought about getting that attic key out from between the floorboards.  He couldn’t stay in there forever, without a way to contact home, listening to the person on the other side of the not-tablet starting to ask questions.  Getting stared at by the dead guy with all the bandages.

What the fuck were “pogs,” though? 

Dammek was pretty sure he could pick the lock on that door with his claws and a sliver of wood pried up from the floorboards.  And if not, he’d just kick the fucking thing down with his heavy, stomping boots, and get alien paint flecks all over his sweatpants.

You know what?  Screw portals, screw dropped tablets, screw the fucking Heiress and screw pogs, too. 


End file.
